J. M. Clements
Spartacus: Swords and Ashes
I
He picked up a fruit knife and tapped gently on the side of a goblet. The sound barely traveled at all through the noise around him. Raucous laughter rolled over girlish giggling, the drums and pipes of the band, and the clash of finger cymbals from one of the few dancers still standing.
Pelorus climbed unsteadily to his feet, using the table for support, blocking the diners’ view of the two-horned crest of his house, which hung on the wall behind him. His fingers clutched at the wine-stained tablecloth, snagging and dragging several dishes toward him. A lamp clattered to the floor, bouncing into the shallow atrium pool, where it joined several floating dishes, apples, animal bones and a partially submerged, half-eaten bunch of grapes. The lamp sputtered and died, leaving a tail of fading smoke and an ever-growing film of oil on the surface of the pool.
“Friends…! Romans…! I entreat you! Silence for but a moment or two,” Pelorus called, half laughing. Someone in the shadows told him to fuck off, and there was more merriment all around.
Pelorus wrapped his fingers around the stem of the goblet, forming a crude hammer with which to bang on the table. He brought it down three times with the practiced aim of a man who knew how to smash things up. Red wine dregs shot across the table, adding to the stains.
“Still your tongues! Every one of you!” he shouted.
And then there was something close to silence.
“Gratitude,” he began, “for honoring the House of Pelorus with your presence here today, before each of us had consumed too much wine for sense to be made!”
Cheers issued forth from half a dozen diners, and there was polite applause from the women in the room whose hands were not otherwise busy.
“And though wine abounds-” cheers again- “be certain to sample the services of the House of the Winged Cock, flavors sweeter even than what fills cup.”
One diner in particular greeted the news with great enthusiasm, half rising to his feet from his couch, tripping and landing on his knees in the shallow pool. Water sloshed over the opposite abutment, while the others laughed and pelted him with grapes.
“Valgus!” Pelorus laughed. “Caius Quinctius Valgus! We shall have to free you from wet attire!” More cheers followed as Valgus’s lady companion tugged at his sodden toga, deftly disrobing him in the manner of one well used to such endeavors.
“Welcome, Valgus, old fool,” Pelorus said. “Welcome Marcus Porcius, and other dear friends from Pompeii. Welcome, too, guests who have journeyed from Baiae and Puteoli. Welcome good Timarchides, fixer infamous. Your presence here at the table is well deserved and long overdue! I trust you will find the house of Marcus Pelorus most hospitable!”
Pelorus paused, basking in the glow of approbation, watching in the light of the flickering lamps as his guests hollered their thanks. He glowed with their love and then held out his hands in a plea for silence once more.
“We are here for celebration of a day of great fortune for our society of Campanian investors. The noblest among us, Gaius Verres, departs Neapolis in but a few days, to take up a post well deserved as governor… Yes, governor! Of all Sicilia!”
Cheers erupted once more.
“To eternal good fortune, and an abundance of coin!”
Pelorus raised his goblet, which had been discreetly refilled, and dropped a stream of wine into the atrium pool. The diners watched in respectful silence as their host invoked the sacred spirits, and offered due homage to the unseen gods.
“I offer this libation in fervent hope of safe travel for our good friend Verres, as he departs Neapolis aboard ship. May his governorship bear fruit of prosperity for his house and for the good people of Sicilia… Those poor, poor bastards!”
The loudest cheers of all shook the walls, drifting into the Neapolitan night sky.
“Gentleman, I give you Gaius Verres, our worthy representative in Sicilia!”
The garden erupted with cries of “VERR-ES! VERR-ES! VERR-ES!” which soon petered out as heads peered around the gathering.
“Wherever the fuck he has gone!” Pelorus giggled, lifting the tablecloth experimentally, and finding nothing.
“I care not!” Caius Valgus yelled. “Matters of greater import plead diversion!” And he pointed down in glee at the woman on her knees before him in the atrium pool, her head bobbing enthusiastically between his legs.
Gaius Verres heard people chanting his name, and then the sound of the band striking up once more. The party would have to go on without him as he explored the darker recesses of the house of Pelorus.
Rooms not intended for the celebration were sparsely lit by solitary oil lamps, and many had already sputtered out. The household slaves had other duties, and the party had already far over-run the length of the average taper.
He could hear the woman sneaking up on him, if one could call it sneaking when there were bells on her ankles.
“Verres,” she stage-whispered down the hall. “Verres? Do you hide from me?”
He ignored her and lifted his lamp. The room was bare, but for a small shrine to household gods, and a wooden sword hanging from the wall. Verres shook his head and sighed.
“Where lies the adventure, Pelorus, you cock?” he muttered to himself. The ankle-bells tinkled closer with exaggerated steps, and Verres was suddenly enveloped in a sheer scarf of Syrian silk.
“Whose cock?” she asked.
“I was not addressing you,” Verres said impatiently.
“Maybe you are not one for conversation,” she said, her voice lilting with the hint of a Pompeiian accent.
“I do not desire your company, woman…”
“Successa. I am called Successa.”
“As you say.” Verres pushed the scarf aside and continued to the next room, fast enough to risk putting out his lamp with the breeze of his passage.
“Successa is my name,” she almost sang it, “Successa is my nature.”
“I am certain many find that true.”
“Why not come close and discover its truth for yourself, Governor Verres?”
“My tastes lie in other achievements.”
“But good Pelorus wills it so.”
“Leave me and fuck him, then.”
With surprising strength, Successa grabbed the governor-designate and pinned him to the wall. Verres dropped the lamp in surprise, dashing its contents into the floor mosaic in a sudden lattice of gentle flames. Successa pressed her hot mouth onto his, her tongue probing, her arms pulling his head closer. She pressed her breasts against him and locked one leg around his calf.
Verres twisted his head away.
“Sample my wares but once, Verres,” she insisted, “and your cock will never seek another resting place.”
“Leave me be, woman.”
Verres pushed her away. His eyes widened as he saw what he was looking for: a staircase down half a floor to the lower level of the house.
“Pelorus’s purse is heavy with coin. And I am tasked with lightening both purse and cock,” Successa insisted.
She watched in bafflement as Verres gingerly descended the stairs. The former flash of brighter light from the broken lamp was almost fading; the burning oil on the floor already reduced to low simmers of dying blue, the door to the lower level almost entirely hidden in shadow.
“That portal offers path to cells where slaves reside,” Successa said disdainfully. “You will discover nothing there of worth.”
Verres ignored her and lifted the latch, opening onto a corridor of roughly assembled brick. Torches, not lamps, flickered every ten paces. He snatched up a fresh brand, and lit it from a sputtering stub in a wall-bracket, waiting patiently as the flames licked around the tar-soaked rags until they hissed into fiery life.
Successa pulled the ankle-bells from her feet and followed.